Walking into the office of a client or colleague, you can immediately start to gauge what type of person he or she is. Is he a hoarder, is he organized, can he find documents as they are needed, or does he waste unnecessary time searching for key paperwork. Some offices are messy but “organized”. Clutter typically leads to wasted time which could have been spent on other more productive items. Decluttering can lead to the realization that you have too much space whereby you may decide to reduce your square footage which can lead to increased savings for your business. There are many ways to declutter your office to improve productivity, beautify the space in which you spend most of your working day and to convey to those around you a sense of organization and cleanliness.

Here are ways to declutter your office:

1. Convert your office to a paperless environment to the extent you can
2. Communicate via email so there is an electronic paper trail, requiring less paper
3. Scan documents (and back up frequently) and shred old documents
4. Eliminate the use of Post-It notes and other paper while using various electronic to-do lists
5. Spend 5 minutes at the end of each work day organizing your desk to ensure the next day begins as productively as possible
6. Keep books used on a frequent basis close by and store (within close proximity) all other manuals that require less frequent use (short term vs. long term storage)
7. When was the last time you cleaned your keyboard, monitor, telephone and desk? This will force you to tidy up your immediate surroundings
8. Manage your computer cables on top of your desk and under your desk to improve your work environment
9. Snap a few photos of your work area and look at it a couple of days later to  give you a different vantage point so you will know where to begin decluttering
10. Take it in stride- offices always become messy while you are working throughout the day. A small mess can snowball into a bigger mess so take small steps to lead to bigger results!

These tricks will help you potentially reduce square footage required (reducing costs) and will ultimately help the environment (less paper used).

If you are even starting to think about moving your office (or other commercial real estate questions), please call me to chat.

sourced picture from www.tutgen.com